49th San Francisco International Film Festival to Introduce First Annual Centerpiece Screening with John Turturro’s Romance & Cigarettes

An Inventive Comedic Musical Starring a Talented Cast Including James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Christopher Walken, Mandy Moore, Eddie Izzard and Mary-Louise Parker

March 28, 2006

San Francisco, CA—The 49th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 20–May 4) will unveil its Centerpiece screening with the U.S. premiere of John Turturro’s Romance & Cigarettes. The Centerpiece is designed to showcase a celebrated director and his or her latest film on the middle weekend of the 15-day SFIFF.  Romance & Cigarettes will screen at 8:00 pm on Saturday, April 29, at the Kabuki 8 Theatres.

Writer/director Turturro (Mac, Illuminata) will be in attendance to introduce the film and will also be present for a Q&A following the screening.  Additional guests to be announced. 

Romance & Cigarettes is a down-and-dirty musical love story set in Gotham’s working class.  An homage to, and update on, the musical, this exuberant new film is a celebration of outrageous behavior and a vehicle for some of the world’s finest actors to let it rip in a deliberately and deliriously over-the-top, no-holds-barred melodrama. Crazy song-and-dance numbers deploy a soundtrack featuring Janis Joplin and Tom Jones to tell the age-old story of a love triangle and a family torn apart by lust and betrayal. The story unfolds as the long-suffering Kitty (Sarandon) discovers a poem her husband Nick (Gandolfini) has written to his mistress Tula (Winslet), a saucy English tart. It’s all delicious fun and games, even as Turturro’s story evolves into a reverie on love, loyalty and memory.

Graham Leggat, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society, said, “In this, his third outing at the helm, John Turturro shows himself to be as smart and versatile a director as he is an actor, taking a beloved film genre that has mostly fallen out of favor and giving it a whole new spin, with an extraordinary New York-based cast. It’s through films like Romance & Cigarettes that movies make themselves new again.”

Sponsored by San Francisco Chronicle and Clift Hotel.

Founded in 1957, the vanguard San Francisco International Film Festival is the longest-running film festival in the Americas. Held each spring for two weeks, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring some 200 films and live events with more than 100 filmmakers in attendance, presenting some 22 awards and attracting a diverse audience of nearly 80,000 people.

The 49th International runs April 20–May 4, 2006 at the Kabuki 8 Theatres, the Castro Theatre and the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco; the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley; and Landmark’s Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto, as well as several smaller venues. To purchase tickets and for ticket information log on to www.sffs.org, call 925.866.9559 or visit the Main Ticket Outlet at the Kabuki 8 Theatres (1881 Post Street) or the Satellite Ticket Outlet at Virgin Megastore (2 Stockton Street). For additional information log on to www.sffs.org or call 415.561.5000.

San Francisco Film Society, presenter of the flagship SFIFF, is a nonprofit arts and educational organization dedicated to celebrating the world of film and media in all its glorious forms. In early 2006 the Film Society unveiled SF360, a broad-spectrum series of initiatives designed to showcase the extraordinary vitality, variety and innovation of the San Francisco Bay Area film and media scene, including www.sf360.org, SF360 San Francisco Movie Night, SF360 InSchool Cinemas and the SF360 Festival of Festivals.

The Film Society will present the first annual San Francisco International Animation Festival from October 11–15, 2006 and a new SF International Youth Media Festival in 2007.

First to 50: SFIFF will hold its landmark 50th anniversary in April 2007.